I'm going to use that opening quote for a while on posts about Venezuela because it succinctly states what shapes US foreign policy toward Venezuela and also has a huge effect on domestic politics. Venezuela's oil industry is under the umbrella of the state-owned oil company, PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela, Sociedad Anónima).

It also contains a report about how Diosdado Cabello, President of the Venezuelan parliament, the National Assembly (AN), announced he's expelling far-right leader María Corina Machado for accepting payment from a foreign government without getting the required approval from the AN, citing a statement by the government of Panama asking Machado to serve as an alternate delegate for Panama to the Organization of American States (OAS). (Andrés Tovar, ¿Qué dicen los artículos 149 y 191 de la Constitución?Últimas Noticias 24.03.2014) Machado's supporters are arguing that Cabello does not have the authority on his on to expel her.

Machado appeared last week at a meeting of the Organization of American State (OAS), in which Panama offered to cede its place to her for the purpose of allowing her to present the Venezuelan opposition's case, though the group did not allow her to do so.

Machado tweeted the photo of herself appearing at the University of Lima along with Mauricio Macri, Governor of the City of Buenos Aires and a key opposition leader against Argentine President Cristina Fernández' left-Peronist government, and also with conservative writer Mario Vargas Llosa (Daniel Lozano, Maduro sube la apuesta y echa a una diputada opositoraLa Nación) Her hashtag #DictaduraEnLaAN is a reference to Cabello's action.

[Machado is one of the most popular figures of the Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD), which unites 29 oppisition parties and, together with the jailed Leopoldo López and the metropolitan mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, embodies the most radical posture against the government within that coalition.]

[That a chief of the extreme right accepts being ambassador of a government hostile to Venezuela has no comparison ... She herself expelled herself from her seat by accepting this. It almost has the effect of a resignation to accept a diplomatic position with another country.]

What Cabello said in his statement was that Machado had agreed to be an alternate delegate for Panama to the Organization of American States (OAS). (See also María Corina Machado suspende visita a PanamáLa Estrella de Panamá 18.03.2014)

Venezuela broke diplomatic relations with Panama earlier this month. (Venezuela's Maduro breaks diplomatic links with PanamaBBC News 03/05/2014) Panama formally called for an OAS meeting on the situation in Venezuela. The OAS is dominated by the United States, which is the major reason South American nations are putting more emphasis over time on regional organizations like UNASUR of which the US is not a member.

Noticiero Visión Siete/TV Pública argentina reports on another aspect of the international cooperation against the elected government of Nicolás Maduro, V7inter: "Todos somos Venezuela" 22.03.2014:

[Eighty newspapers from all of Latin America have launched an unprecedented joint campaign to publish in a coordinated manner information about the crisis in Venezuela, with intentions to declare themselves officially as politicians {!} and to aim to debilitate the government of Nicolás Maduro.]

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American poster from the Second World War; that's not one of those in which we are currently engaged, though some people seem to think ...

Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803)

Herder developed a philosophy of history in which he focused on the prominent ideas of historical eras, that he held to be fundamentally shaped by the successive historical stages leading to improvements in civilization. He also developed theories of language anticipating 20th-century linguistics. "Instead of seeing [language] as an assemblage of signs co-ordinated with things, [Herder saw it] rather as the necessary embodiment of a certain form of consciousness, which in this case is that form in which there are such things as signs for us." (Charles Taylor)